Book: The remix

Helene Hegemann, a seventeen-year-old German writer, has “mixed” (her word) together a best-selling novel titled “Axolotl Roadkill.” According to an article in the Times, Hegemann lifted entire pages from a novel by a lesser known writer, and she doesn’t seem at all apologetic about doing so. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Hegemann in response to accusations of plagiarism. The judges of the Leipzig Book Fair seem to agree with her, at least in principle: even after the author admitted to copying another writer’s work, “Axolotl Roadkill” remains a finalist for the Fair’s $20,000 prize in fiction.

The Leipzig committee’s decision not to strike the book from their finalist’s list, effectively endorsing, or at least approving, Hegemann’s actions, is either an alarming or a progressive response. The cultural-relativist argument is that Germany, specifically Berlin, is a hotbed of artistic mixing and mashing, sampling and re-sampling, and that Hegemann is simply employing these same tactics in her writing. If a d.j. can thread together twenty different songs and package the end product as her own, why can’t a writer? This seems to be the question Hegemann is using as a defense. Original content, then, becomes subordinate to context, meaning that as long as a newer, larger work is being created, portions of prior works are fair game.

Kelyn Brannon, CFO of Arista Networks Inc. (NYSE:ANET) disposed a total of 20,000 shares on Wednesday, December 24. The shares were sold at an average price of $64.87, with a total worth of around $1,297,400, according to an SEC filing.
Ms. Brannon dumped the same amount of shares on December 17. The shares were priced at $67.92 with a total value of $1,358,400. Before that, on December 8, she sold 5,000 shares at an average price of $61.90 with a total worth of $309,500.

Buzzfeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith announced his decision to fire the site's "viral politics" writer Benny Johnson after finding at least "40 instances" of plagiarism in his work on Friday evening in a memo to staff and a post on the site.

BERLIN — Germany’s education minister said Wednesday she will not resign after a university found she had plagiarized parts of her thesis but will instead to fight the ruling — a major embarrassment for the government in an election year.
Annette Schavan, 57, is a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the second minister in her Cabinet to lose a doctorate because of plagiarism. Former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned in 2011 after it emerged he copied large parts of his thesis.

Daniel Reetz is an artist and engineer who ran into a problem one day – his office building collapsed, breaking its steam pipes and ruining every book in the building. But while the physical books were destroyed, Reetz's loss wasn't 100%. He had digitally scanned most of them, and as long as he had redundant backups in ones and zeroes, he'd never actually "lose" his books.

Like any ex-New Yorker I’m always on the lookout for good bagels. Normally they’re to be found in places (South Florida, for example) where lots of Jews from New York have moved. Berlin would not be someplace I would anticipate good bagels. But I was intrigued by this shop that I saw out the window of a bus:
The mention of bialys suggests authenticity. Has anyone been there? Any good?